


a shadow burning in your night

by orpheus_under_starlight



Series: to walk alongside you [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Attempted Murder, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Multi, Original Fifth Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:46:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23553262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orpheus_under_starlight/pseuds/orpheus_under_starlight
Summary: A knife, a few threats, and several promises. Jeralt muses. His children hover.
Relationships: Mentioned My Unit | Byleth/Yuri Leclerc, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: to walk alongside you [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646458
Comments: 5
Kudos: 103





	a shadow burning in your night

_Father._

Her heart pulses in her chest, faintly, an echoing memory of something that once was. She tightens her hands on her sword. Her brother isn’t here; he’s on a mission elsewhere. He can feel her distress, just as Sothis can, but he can only reverberate worry in response.

_Father. Father. Father—_

Monica pauses. Byleth sees a glint of metal.

Without hesitation, she swings the sword and knocks the dagger out of Monica’s hands. A distant part of her feels shocked when it connects _—isn’t that man here?—_ but the thought of it is swept out of her mind as Monica gasps, her face going white.

Jeralt startles. “Kid—?”

“It would be a shame,” Byleth says, her dead heart pulsing in her mouth as she beholds the strange dagger lying in the grass with poison glinting at its edges, as she stares very hard at Monica, who takes several steps back, “if that dagger were to accidentally knick anyone, Monica. Weapons safety is paramount among allies. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Y-yes, of course,” Monica says with a nervous laugh.

Byleth takes a step forward in front of her father and rubs the dagger into the ground with her boot. “And it would also be a shame if unknown poisons made recovery impossible or difficult to determine the cause of. I’m not sure where you happened upon this particular poison, but its make is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’m going to have to confiscate it, I’m afraid. Don’t worry. You’ll get it back. Without the poison.”

Monica looks very unhappy. Downright murderous, if she had to take a guess. But she only laughs again. “Yes, I understand, Professor. I would never want to hurt one of my allies, even by accident!”

“Good of you. Now run along. Back to the monastery. Drills will be starting in just a few minutes.” She watches until Monica reluctantly turns and starts walking back along the path. Higher in the sky, a wyvern’s shadow tails her progress. When she turns to Jeralt, he’s looking at her with an expression she can’t begin to decipher. The silence between them stretches on for a very long moment.

Finally, he puts his hand on her shoulder, opening his mouth. After a moment, he seems to think better of it; he pulls her into his arms, cradling her head like he used to when she was a child and got herself and her brother out of yet another improbably dangerous situation. Suddenly the world seems to be too much. Byleth draws in a shaky, upset breath, only dimly realizing the intensity of her emotions when tears spill from her eyes and dampen Jeralt’s overtunic. 

“It’s alright, Byleth,” her father is murmuring, and despite everything, she feels warmth suffuse that empty place in her chest where her heart lays still and silent. “I’m still here. You spotted the danger before I did.”

“Father,” she manages.

He runs his fingers through her hair, a casual, soothing motion that shakes her to the core, because he’s never done it before. “It’s alright.”

“Seteth and Claude are watching,” she says, the words nearly soundless. “I’m not setting a very good example.”

Jeralt snorts. “To hell with being a good example. How much did I ever do that for you? C’mon. I’ve always done best after a long battle by chowing down and drinking up. And you’re old enough now. I’ll let you have some ale. Let’s go back to the monastery.”

“Thanks,” Byleth deadpans. She draws back, but lingers closely at his side.

“Coming, Riegan boy?” Jeralt calls, and Claude sidles out of the shadows as if he’d always meant to at that exact moment. He’s got that fake smile planted firmly on his face, but his eyes are searching when he looks Byleth over. “You’re into poisons, aren’t you? You might be able to find something useful in that dagger.”

“It’s alright, Claude,” Byleth murmurs.

He doesn’t look like he quite believes her, but the hitch in his shoulders loosens slightly and the smile becomes a little more real. The dagger goes into a special-looking pouch hooked to the belt beneath his uniform; he comes to stand at Byleth’s side, looking at father and daughter alike with as much respect as he’s probably ever shown anyone at the monastery. “That was some maneuver, Teach. You spotted that faster than even I did. Now, I’ll be the first to admit Monica is suspicious no matter which way you look at her—”

“—but you didn’t expect outright murder?” she asks. Claude blinks. “Neither did I.”

“Then... what made you look for the dagger?” 

It’s a reasonable question. Jeralt is listening, too, just as curious as the boy who has become her closest friend and confidant aside from him. Byleth frowns, trying to piece together the past, but she can only come up with a single flimsy curiosity. Before the monastery, she remembered much more—but she’s come to realize that much of that knowledge is only useful in the abstract, insofar as she can apply the lessons of a dead world to this living one. And Sothis awakening has... dulled her recall. Somehow. 

In all truth, it was her and her brother’s combined efforts. Their pooled knowledge. The halves of the soul Rhea somehow split and shared between the two of them. “The first time I was doing my rounds after rescuing Flayn, I happened upon her speaking with Edelgard. I listened for a few moments before they noticed me. Monica’s voice was entirely different until she realized I was there. I didn’t her enough for it to be incriminating, but...”

“It made you suspicious,” Jeralt finishes.

She nods. As always, he’s got an exceptional handle on her thought processes.

“That’s good—for a starting point.” Claude tilts his head. “But that’s not all, is it?”

“No, but I’ll tell you later,” Byleth says, putting a hand on his shoulder briefly to emphasize that she actually means it. Jeralt knows that when she gets suspicious she researches extensively, but Claude isn’t quite aware of this habit being something they both share just yet. Funny for such an observant boy. “At any rate, Seteth is probably taking care of it now. He saw it happen.”

“Well, that’ll have to do for now, I suppose. I happen to know that roasted pheasant is being served at the dining hall this very evening. So, if either of you like it—”

“Father ate two entire pheasants once.”

“Hey, kid, that’s confidential information,” Jeralt protests, a slight smile at the corners of his lips anyways.

-

Byleth is inseparable from the Captain’s side for a good two weeks—a two weeks that begin to drive everyone batty, not just Claude, as while his dear Teach is still keeping up with her professorial duties, every other waking moment is spent with Jeralt. To most, she’s just taking advantage of her father’s leave time to bond, but Claude thinks he knows better by now. Especially when her brother starts spending more time guarding the outside of Jeralt’s door while Dimitri tries in vain to get him to teach the Blue Lions some lessons.

Claude’s Byleth is hovering. With a completely deadpan expression and no apparent worry, sure, but when she turned to her father and said with complete seriousness _maybe we should get you to study for the Assassin qualification exams, so your situational awareness can be kept up,_ Claude knew it was time to take action.

Not even Leonie is quite as bad about her deep adoration of the Captain driving her to spend copious amounts of her free time with him, and that’s saying something.

Only Jeralt looks up when Claude breezes into the captain’s quarters. Jeralt doesn’t smile when Claude enters. But he doesn’t banish him, either, which he’ll take as a good sign; he almost seems amused by the entrance Claude makes. Or maybe it’s just that his daughter isn’t in the mood for her student’s antics in the slightest. Byleth is marking papers with a chair pulled up next to her father, her leg pressed against his, completely oblivious to the world.

“Captain. Teach.”

Byleth startles, which for Byleth means that she pauses slightly and looks up with mild offense in her eyes. Claude wants to smile at the sight. “Claude.”

“Teach, I need your help with some of the theoretical tactics you assigned us for reading,” he declares, waving a sheaf of papers in her general direction. “Well. Assigned me, specifically. I know you’re training me in the upper levels of thinking and a lot of that work is individual, but I’d really appreciate it if you could spare a moment of your time to help me understand some things.”

“Go on. I’ll be fine here,” Jeralt pitches in— _thank you,_ Claude hopes he’s communicating when he locks eyes with Jeralt—and when Byleth still looks reluctant, he puts a hand on her shoulder. “Kid. Monica is in detainment. Seteth made sure of it. Go and help your student—” did he just give Claude a stern glance?— “and I’ll still be here when you return. Alright? You won’t lose me if you lose sight of me. Object permanence.”

Byleth snorts, and immediately covers her mouth and her nose with her hand, wide-eyed at her own reaction. 

Claude can’t help it. He laughs.

“Claude,” Byleth says, turning to him. “Explain.”

“You thought it was funny, Teach,” he returns, very fond, ignoring the actual question, and he tamps down on the shock he feels in the back of his mind. She doesn’t need more people treating her like an emotionless object—they just don’t know what to look for, anyways, and he’s promised himself that he’s going to help her grow any way he can. “C’mon. I’m not kidding about these tactics, you know.”

“...Alright.”

“Have fun,” Jeralt says, casual as you please, and. Uh. _Yeah._ He definitely knows something Claude doesn’t, because there’s some kind of incredibly complicated emotion playing out behind his eyes that he couldn’t even begin to name. At least his words were directed at Byleth. He thinks.

Because otherwise, it’s probably a threat. To him. 

For some reason Claude feels like a boy again—like his father has caught him raiding the pantry for snacks to take with him to a nice napping spot. A shiver runs up his spine. That did not end well.

Granted, his mother thought it was hilarious _(”Ha! Like father, like son! You can’t say you’re going to punish him when you did the exact same thing yesterday, can you, my king?”),_ which is probably the only reason he’s still got a behind he’s capable of sitting down upon... but that’s not the point, he scolds himself. Not the point at all. The point is that Jeralt knows something about his daughter, specifically (and, well, one would hope so), that he’s been meaning to divulge to her—something he almost didn’t survive to tell her. Something that’s kept her hovering at his side for a solid two weeks.

And it’s something he needs to know if he’s going to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes of the church.

_I think Jeralt approves of me,_ he reasons, not entirely sure that it’s the case, but supporting him in his bid to get Byleth Number One out and doing things again is a pretty good sign in and of itself. _If I can just convince him that I have her best interests in mind—?_

It would be a lie, of course. But a necessary one.

Claude swallows and gives it up, putting his hands behind his head as he walks alongside her in the silences he’s grown more used to sharing with her as time has gone on. The woman beside him has fought at his side in battle since she’s come to the monastery; she’s looked out for him, guided his growth, guided the growth of his classmates in the Golden Deer House, and has invited anyone and everyone into the Golden Deer, regardless of where they come from or what their status is. In the time he’s known her, she’s gone from a lonely-looking merc to a stoic but kind mentor and coworker to almost everyone around her—always willing to help someone in need, and constantly engaging in random acts of kindness that manage to be just what a person needs at any given moment. 

She looks after everyone, including her brother, who seems to have decided that his main task in life is to look after Dimitri. But the only person in her life who looks after her is Jeralt, and she was quite literally just inches away from losing him in a ruined chapel on a cold, blustery day.

_I want to be there for you,_ he finds himself thinking, looking at her, cognizant of the way her eyes are scanning their surroundings with a studied care that wasn’t quite as intent before the events of their last mission. And it’s a dangerous thought in a way most of his dangerous thoughts aren’t. He knows himself well enough to know when his motives are in harmony with his goals and when they aren’t; when it comes to Byleth Eisner, his teacher, wielder of the Sword of the Creator, that has been thrown entirely out of whack in a way that leaves him breathless just as it also fills him with a deep-seated unease. 

The thoughts he’s having now are mostly selfish, in contrast to what he wants to see in the world around. _I want you to rely on me. I want you to look at me. I want to walk the path with you. I want to share a new dawn with you._

Childish things. Boyish things. Things that he hadn’t stopped to consider at any point—the idea that he might come to feel for someone one day, preoccupied as he has always been with schemes and tactics, never crossed his mind with any seriousness.

Byleth looks up at him. “Claude.”

“Yes?”

“We’re here.”

He tunes back into reality and sees that they’re standing in front of her door, which is open. “Ah. So we are.”

“I’ll make tea,” she says, already striding in as if she’s after her next target. He follows her in and shuts the door, taking a seat at the tea table she’s put by the foot of her bed. She rummages around in a small chest on her desk. “Pine needle?”

He gives her a little smile. Her back is turned. It makes it easier, somehow. “As always, Teach.”

As she settles in and sets the tea to steep, he spreads his papers on the free areas of the table, mind already busy with mapping out the theoretics of the assignment. _So, the army is in a desert, and its main goal is twofold: route the enemy and protect the villagers taking shelter inside the ruined temple. Teach started the army down at the lower left boundary of the battlefield—_

“Claude,” Byleth says, and he looks up to find something complicated lurking behind her eyes. “I... thank you.”

He blinks once, then again, just to make sure she’s actually expressing the emotion he thinks she is. When the slight hunch to her shoulders and her bowed head remain in realspace, he leans forward and puts his hand over hers. She looks at him again _(she doesn’t understand,_ the softer part of him trills in warning). But she doesn’t remove her hand from his grasp. 

“Hey. I’m here for you,” he says. He hopes it sounds like a simple promise and not like the vow he’s starting to think it might be. “I mean that. Okay? You might be my Teach, but you’re also my friend."

She smiles. Claude knows he's doomed.

-

It’s something, Jeralt decides, to watch your child come alive when a mere boy enters the room.

The effect Claude von Riegan has on Byleth—without even trying—more hilariously, without either of them noticing how transparent they become around each other—is downright bewildering to watch. Byleth brightens the minute she catches sight of him, no matter the time or the place. He’s well used to reading the body language of his children as opposed to looking at their faces, so much so that when he does happen to chance a look at her while he’s sharing a meal with her and Claude, the smile and the lightness in her eyes nearly sees him choke his way right out of the mortal plane.

“Father?” Byleth inquires, somehow sounding only dully surprised, pounding him on the back with undue force. (If you ask him.)

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Jeralt has to cough a couple more times before he can get the words out. “Just—went down the wrong way. Don’t mind me.”

Claude is looking between the two of them with open curiosity. “Huh. Never thought I’d see the Blade Breaker fall victim to his own body.”

“Live as long as I have, and it’ll happen more than a couple times to you, too,” he says with amusement that only increases when Claude’s eyes get sharper. The boy is always on a hunt for a good mystery—both Byleth and Byleth have happily shared Claude's escapades in the library with him in his increasingly rare free moments. 

Let him spin his wheels. Focus on something else. 

_Ah, who am I kidding,_ Jeralt laments. He’s had his reasons for telling Byleth of her mother’s ring.

“Maybe that’s a tactic we can use,” Byleth muses. “Something to do with food...”

The boy leans forward, practically sparkling as he takes the bait Byleth has laid out for him. “You know, Teach, I’ve still got that stomach poison—”

“Absolutely not.” It isn’t the first time she’s denied him that, from what Jeralt hears, but Claude hardly seems bothered. 

“Another day, then,” he says with a wink. Byleth actually _flushes—_ granted, the lightest of pinks, barely detectable to anyone who didn’t have to spend the first five years of her life being hyperattentive to every change in her vitals, but Jeralt starts on another pheasant leg to mask how utterly bowled over he is. First the smiles, then the most open concern she’s ever had for him, then the anger at Remire, and the—the fear, he realizes, when she’d saved him from a dagger through the ribs. Now this.

He might just have a heart attack if he finds his son smiling over that Abyssian spymaster of a boy with the purple hair he's been hanging around lately.

_Sitri,_ Jeralt thinks, closing his eyes for a moment. He sees green under blue skies, long hair drifting in a balmy breeze. _My love. You're watching, aren't you? Please, keep helping me look out for them. Rhea sure as hell won't._


End file.
